DAP claims that an Election Commission (EC) registrar had rejected the Parliament Hansard as evidence during a hearing on the electoral roll earlier this month.

The Hansard was produced by one of the applicants who opposed to the registration of military members and their spouses as new voters for the Segamat parliament seat in Johor.

According to DAP legal bureau secretary Michelle Ng, the registrar said the Hansard produced by the applicant “cannot be believed”.

"This Hansard (contains) the part of the parliamentary proceedings where the deputy defence minister admitted that the building of the Segamat (army) camp has not been completed," she told a press conference in Kuala Lumpur today.

This is believed to be in regard to Deputy Defence Minister Mohd Johari Baharum (photo), who on Nov 28, defended the existence of 1,051 army voters at the Segamat camp, which is still under construction.

The Parliament Hansard is an official document containing a record of Dewan Rakyat and Dewan Negara proceedings.

Meanwhile, Ng alleged that after rejecting the Hansard, the registrar told the applicant to bring the deputy minister as a witness for his testimony to be used as grounds for objecting to the new voters.

However, she claimed the registrar refused to adjourn the proceedings in order for the applicant to summon the deputy minister.

Ng claimed this was one of several cases where electoral roll objection hearings between Dec 4 and 10, had been unfairly handled by the EC.

However, she pointed out that the registrar was allegedly willing to adjourn proceedings to allow an army captain to secure a full list of names of 20 voters being objected to.

Applicants denied BM translators

Ng also claimed that applicants who were not well versed in Bahasa Malaysia had their requests for translators rejected.

"They were made to take oaths in the Malay language by repeating after an officer from the EC, despite not understanding what was being said.

"The absence of a translator also meant that some of the applicants could not understand what was happening in the hearings and could not communicate their reasons for objection," she said.

Ng said all objections made by the 48 applicants in Segamat were rejected.

The opposition claims that the government is building army camps nationwide in order to bolster their vote count in the upcoming 14th general election.

The government has denied this.

In the last general election, MIC president Dr S Subramaniam won the Segamat parliament seat with a slim majority of 1,217 votes.